At first the two religions held aloof from one another. But while Buddhism flourished more and more, Shinto was gradually weakened by the diversion into another channel of material resources and religious thought which might otherwise have been bestowed upon itself. =Ryôbu Shinto=.--The two religions came into more direct contact in the eighth century, when there began a process of pacific penetration of the weaker by the stronger cult, which yielded some curious and important results. Buddhism is not a militant religion in the sense that Islam was. It owes little or nothing to the aid of the secular arm, and avoids rather than seeks open conflicts with other faiths. What the Japanese call _hōben_ (pious device) and to which we should often apply the harsher terms "pious fraud" or "priestcraft," are more congenial to it. A notable application of the _hōben_ method occurred in the time of the Mikado Shōmu, who reigned at Nara from 724 to 756. Wishing to celebrate his reign by the erection of a great Buddhist temple and image, he took advice of Gyōgi, a priest renowned to this day for many services to civilization, and despatched him to Ise with a present for the Sun-Goddess of a relic of Buddha. Gyōgi spent seven days and seven nights in prayer under a tree close to the gate of the shrine, and was then vouchsafed an oracle in the form of some couplets of Chinese verse couched in purely Buddhistic phraseology. It spoke of the Sun of truth enlightening the long night of life and death and of the Moon of eternal reality dispersing the clouds of sin and ignorance. This was interpreted to mean that the Sun-Goddess identified herself with Vairochana, called by the Japanese Birushana or Dainichi (great Sun), a person of a Buddhist trinity and described as the personification of essential _bodhi_ (enlightenment) and absolute purity. The Sun-Goddess subsequently appeared to the Mikado in a dream and confirmed this view of her character. The temple (Tōdaiji) founded by Shōmu--though not the original building--is still in existence. It contains the famous colossal statue of Birushana, which is at this day one of the wonders of Japan.